existing
by Mahri Lellan
Summary: Mello ponders what he sees in Matt the night he leaves. Matt makes an unnamed sacrifice. The future looks hazy from here. T merely for minor language.


The night was falling fast, faster and faster as Mello stormed around his room like a hurricane gone wrong, knocking his sheet

The night was falling fast, faster and faster as Mello stormed around his room like a hurricane gone wrong, knocking his sheets from his bed, homework from the nightstand, and all at once, sweeping chocolate into his bag. The hour seemed to be darker than usual and the sky, just dimly lit beyond his window, seemed to taunt with daylight eluding him. _You'll be out too late_, it crooned at him as he stuffed clothing into the bag along with his sweets. _You'll never find your way._

"I don't need a fucking way," he grumbled to himself, exercising that wicked tongue that had long since belonged to him. He turned on his heel and headed for the door in such a fury that he wrong headlong into a redheaded boy about his age, if not slightly younger. "Get out of my way," he muttered in greeting, pushing the gamer aside.

"Mel'." The collected voice stopped him like ice water trickling down his spine, running through his body and freezing his feet to the carpet.

He turned to stomp down the hallway.

He found that he couldn't.

Resigned that there was nothing better to do now, he rolled his fiery golden eyes and turned to meet the boy who had stopped him. "What do you want, Matt?"

"I heard," was all he said.

"Yeah, and?"

"I want to help you."

"Help me do what?" Mello snarled as if the strap of the bag fisted tightly in his hand didn't betray him by speaking his intentions.

Matt shifted uneasily on the carpet, seeming unable to lift his goggled eyes and bring his gaze to meet Mello's. He opened his mouth, took a breath in lieu of speaking, and then closed it again. He was silent for so long that Mello began to grow irritated again.

"Look, if you're going to be a perennial ass—"

"Mel', don't go."

The blonde, gaping in the interruption, promptly shut his mouth and stared hard at the only person he'd been willing to call a 'friend' within the past few years. "What kind of dipshit are you to say that, Matt?" he questioned, for once not being harsh simply for the sake of it, but to shake the younger one from his ideas. Matt had always been pathetically hopeful, cheery and optimistic. He might not have seemed like one to look to the future, but between the two of them, he had always been the idealist.

"Mello, _please_."

He'd never before heard that desperation in Matt's voice. Never. He'd always thought that Matt was capable of few things: video games, laziness, and childish dreams. He had not once associated any kind of longing, pleading, sadness or honesty with the other and yet, there it all was, smacking him in the face and taunting him worse than the night had ever done.

"What the hell do you want from me?" he demanded, guilt creeping into him like spiders in his veins, crawling throughout his body and spinning careful, entrapping webs. He was careful to keep his face a canvas of pure anger and annoyance, not daring to let on that he might have been attached to someone in any way. Matt had only ever been a 'friend'. Entertainment for rainy days, someone to complain to, to bitch about Near to. Matt was a kid, destined to be left behind. Expendable. Unimportant. Obtrusive, even. It was good, necessary and healthy to leave him at this damned orphanage.

Matt shook his head. "Nothing."

"Then why are you stopping me?"

Matt shook his head again. "No reason."

The older boy watched him swallow with great effort as though he were being fed poison that he was taking ever so reluctantly, but quite willingly. With a slow, wrenching pain, Mello realized that he was looking at someone making a sacrifice.

"You can't come with me," he said sternly, if only to make it clear for the record.

"I know."

"You can't come looking for me."

"I know."

"You can't look after me."

"I know."

"You can't hope."

"You can't wonder."

"You can't worry."

"You can't love me."

Mello watched, almost impassively as his words dug into Matt's ribs, pulling out his lungs and heart and throwing them to the floor. He watched as he verbally trashed his friend's insides, stomped on them and desecrated them. He watched as Matt just stood there and took it.

"I know," he said, very quietly, tears quivering in his voice and teasing the corners of his eyes, but he refused to let them fall. "I don't want anything from you," he said, his words sounding like rote, his voice a well-trained dog. "Nothing more. I don't want you to come back, I don't want you to stay out of trouble or call me or anything." He swallowed again, that same, poisonous, suicidal surrender. "I just want you to exist."

He could have been rude. He could have been mean and scathing and flippant. He could have shot Matt down with a crude word and a bark of laughter so normal for him, and yet he didn't. He gave no acknowledgement, but merely pursed his lips, his expression, for a quick second, twisting into an unfamiliar look of savage pain.

It was then that he found that the ice holding him back had melted and he was free to storm down the hallway as he pleased. He, however, hesitated. He looked at Matt, watched him still staring at the mere foot of carpet that separated them. He looked pathetic and cowardly, and yet, in some way, resigned to something greater. He seemed foolish and yet selfless, scared but willing. He looked sad and content, tragic yet… And there, there was something that was inexplicable. It wasn't hope and it wasn't disappointment there, but there was some unnamed emotion pinned to their futures.

He had known from the start that little kid who'd happened upon him in the library and persisted to stay with him, to befriend him where no one else had, who defended his name in the face of their adversaries and fought tooth and nail for him against their enemies was not someone who was simply 'expendable' or 'obtrusive'. It was true that at times he felt that Matt was even less than that, less than the loyal dog that begged at his master's feet for some small sign of approval. That, he couldn't deny.

But now there was that conflict, that torrent of emotion raging like a storm in the tatters of the guts that he'd abused in the boy. Yet still, he stood there stony and rather ashen-faced, brittle but still erect. He looked in the face of sacrifice, and rather brashly tipped Matt's chin up with a motion that was almost a strike.

"Keep believing."

* * *

**AN: **they don't talk like kids, haha

But whatever.

I've always been able to relate to Matt and I guess, in trying to look at myself, I had Mello look at him. It kind of worked.

ROFL WHAT I WROTE ANOTHER FANFICTION?


End file.
